The Financial Survival Network is dedicated to helping you build your financial fortress so that you can survive and thrive in the new economy. It's all about what's next!

"Ranting" Andy Hoffman is back for our Monday afternoon get together. He believes the international crisis has entered a new phase. No matter how the politicians try to use inflated GDP numbers, uninflated-inflation numbers, or many other statistics, global economic activity is declining and people around the globe are getting more poor. China's on the precipice as is most of Europe and eventually the US. Manipulated markets are not healthy markets, and there's nothing real about any public market in the world. Therefore, get ready! Get your plans in place and sit back, wait for the inevitable. It will be here sooner than you ever thought possible.

Larken Rose, a noted libertarian, perhaps bordering on anarchist, spoke at the Ron Paul/End the Fed Rally in Philadelphia, this Sunday, 4/22/2012. Rose was quite impassioned, and he rallied the crowd. His perspective on government is that the functions it performs, it performs badly; individuals acting in concert could do a much better job. Rose's belief is that while limited government is a worthy goal of any society, in actuality it never works out the way it's intended to. Once Da Boyz have been given the right to tax, this quickly becomes the right to steal. This is how the United States has wound up in its current situation, tottering on the brink of collapse and totalitarianism.

Charles Hugh Smith and Rick Ackerman joined us today for another investment roundtable, and what to do with your retirement investments was a big topic. Each day, the government gets more desperate in their frantic search for new revenues to keep the bankrupt system afloat. Therefore, the multi-trillion dollar pool of private retirement savings becomes an ever more irresistible target for a rapacious congress, which is more concerned about feeding itself than helping Americans through the current economic malaise.

This concept led to a discussion of survival investing and where to safely store your money. Charles introduced the concept of re-localization. There's a definite trend in society, where globalization was the buzz word for the past 20 years. But, the economic crisis has led to a rediscovery of local investment and entrepreneurial opportunism. Rather than looking to Wall Street to discover investment opportunities, we must look to Main Street to find profitable businesses that will lead us out of this economic darkness. Networks are being created to allow individuals to participate in this investment shift.